Megapixel Arms Race Over; You Won

The crummy camera in your phone would have been considered a multi-megapixel wonder just a few years ago. But advances in cramming megapixels into cameras have run up against the limits of what's usable. Wired has some suggestions about how to choose a digital camera, now that they're all powerful enough.

But piling on pixels can actually hurt the quality of your photos, because manufacturers typically just squeeze more little diodes into the same space on the image sensor. That means the physical size of each pixel shrinks, causing them to pick up more digital artifacts, such as colored flecks. The larger you print the photo, the more obvious these flaws become. In the end, a lo-res camera may produce better enlargements than a model bursting with megapixels.

You can also improve picture quality by refusing to point your camera at Paris Hilton.